LBJ's 'Better Deal' Slogan Only Latest in Long Series
Tuesday, March 31, 1964 University Daily Kansan I
Rv Alvin Snivak
WASHINGTON —(UPI) — Back-stairs at the White House; While President Johnson's aides hesitate to comment about his campaign slogan for this year, Democratic headquarters has made it practically official.
The "Better Deal" slogan came to the surface relatively unobtrusively two Sundays ago when Johnson, interviewed for television, was asked if any "handy label" had come to mind for his new administration.
"LBJ Goal: 'Better Deal'" was the main headline in the latest edition of the party's official publication. "Democrat."
"I haven't thought of any slogan," the President replied and then added with a trace of a grin "but I suppose all of us want a better deal, don't we?"
TWO NIGHTS later, in a political speech at a Democratic fund raising dinner here, Johnson used the "Better Deal" slogan twice, in passing.
The questioner had recalled that preceding administrations flourished the labels of a New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Crusade, and New Frontier.
White House reporters asked the President's former press secretary, Pierre Salinger and his new one, George E. Reedy, whether this was significant. Neither would say. Reedy, as press secretaries so often
do, told reporters Johnson's words spoke for themselves.
But what with Johnson's announced war on poverty, the tax cut, his civil rights battle and other administration programs which he has insisted would improve the lot of Americans, the odds are he will be talking about a "Better Deal" from now on.
Whether Johnson himself, in that televised interview, or whether one of his aides coined the slogan probably will remain confidential until long after the President leaves office.
Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" was born with as little fanfare as Johnson's "Better Deal."
JUDGE SAMUEL Roseman, an FDR braintrouter, put the words into a revised draft of Roosevelt's speech accepting the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination. Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in his "The Crisis of the Old Order," told about it this way:
"Rosenman, dogged perhaps by the title of Stewart Chase's article in the current New Republic ('A New Deal for America') but without noting any special significance (any more than Roosevelt did when he came to deliver the words), set down the sentence. 'I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for American people.'"
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